CRAZY, an Award-Winning Film Inspired By the Life of Guitar Legend Hank Garland, Is an Official Selection at California’s Wine Country Film Festival, Screening Friday, July 25, 7PM in Kenwood, CA

July 22, 2008

LOS ANGELES, July 22 /PRNewswire/ — CRAZY, an independent feature film inspired by the tragic life and groundbreaking music of legendary 1950s-era guitarist Hank Garland, is an official selection at the 22nd Annual Wine Country Film Festival, a roving festival that takes place in spectacular outdoor settings and select theaters and venues throughout Northern California’s Napa and Sonoma Valleys. CRAZY will be screened Friday, July 25 at 7PM at the Kenwood Depot, a Sonoma County historic landmark that was a working train station for the Northern Pacific and Southern Pacific Railroads until 1947 (314 Warm Springs Road, Kenwood, CA 95452).

Waylon Payne, acclaimed for his debut film role as Jerry Lee Lewis in the Oscar-winning film Walk The Line, stars as Hank Garland. LA.com recently wrote, “The brash and brilliant musician is well played by charismatic actor Waylon Payne.” In addition to acting, Payne is a country artist with deep musical roots. He was named for his godfather, Waylon Jennings, and is the son of GRAMMY-winning country singer Sammi Smith and Jody Payne, longtime guitarist for Willie Nelson.

CRAZY has won major awards at 2008 festivals, including Best Feature honors at Colorado’s Breckenridge Festival of Film — where Payne also won for Best Actor — and the Hoboken Film Festival. The film also won the Vanguard Award, top honor at the Jacksonville International Film Festival in Jacksonville, FL. Hank Garland lived the last four decades of his life near Jacksonville with his brother (and manager) Billy Garland and Billy’s wife Amy, who attended the screening.

Other awards include Best Feature at Hawaii’s Big Island Film Festival and the Jury Award for Best Feature at the Charleston International Film Festival. For Charleston’s Post and Courier, Bill Thompson wrote, “CRAZY has a bedrock feel of authenticity…a lively, emotionally resonant movie that is an uncommonly seamless meld of character study and period recreation.” At the L.A. area’s Method Fest in Calabasas, CA, CRAZY won the Daily News Award for Best Screenplay for a script co-written by CRAZY’s director Rick Bieber, Jason Ehlers and Brent Boyd.

Bieber was introduced to the project — and to the late Hank Garland — by Ray Scherr, who served as Executive Producer for CRAZY along with guitar hero Steve Vai (who performs a cameo as Hank Williams) under the Favored Nations Films mantle. Scherr had known the Garland family for over a decade, and believed Hank’s true story had great potential for a compelling drama. Hank consulted on the screenplay and was involved with the project until he passed away in December ’04, shortly before principal photography began. CRAZY’s music was produced by multiple-GRAMMY(R)-winning producer Larry Klein, who was most recently honored for the 2007 Album of the Year, Herbie Hancock’s River – The Joni Letters.

CRAZY chronicles Hank Garland’s rise to fame in Nashville, from playing on hits for icons including Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline, the Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison through his brief but influential solo career as a visionary jazz artist. It also explores his tempestuous marriage as well as his repeated clashes with the “Nashville Mob” — who then controlled the country music establishment — over artist’s rights, civil rights and other issues. The car crash and electroshock treatments that eventually ended Garland’s performing career and derailed his life are starkly portrayed, and the enormity of what was lost is deeply felt.